On 27 November 2025, the EC released the EU Bioeconomy Strategy, which had previously been updated in 2018. The EC hopes to further unlock a sector that had an estimate value of EUR 2.7 trillion and employed more than 17 million people in 2023.
The strategy, which comes after more than two years of deliberations, puts forward four main objectives:
Ensuring long-term competitiveness of the EU bioeconomy
Increasing the efficient and circular use of biological resources
Securing biomass supply
Positioning the EU in the international market
The EC will look to scale up novel yet promising uses of biomass, including chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and textiles. These applications face significantly higher barriers to entry compared with the mature bioenergy sector.
To this end, the EU will look to reduce regulatory burdens by introducing the Biotech Acts. Environmental benefits of bio-based products, not always visible to customers, are expected to be clarified by updating product environmental footprint (PEF) methods.
Funding mechanisms targeted at bioeconomy start-ups include:
European Competitiveness Fund
Horizon Europe
Common Agricultural Policy
InvestEU Blue Economy
Scale-up Europe Fund
European Circular Bioeconomy Fund
The strategy appears to be focused on non-energy outputs associated with the bioeconomy. However, based on comments on previous drafts, the EC has softened its stance towards bioenergy, where it had previously suggested that limited biomass feedstocks should be targeted at food and green materials applications instead.
The final release suggests an acceptance of the role of bioenergy (including biomethane) both now and in the future:
Further, while the strategy still leans towards emerging applications, rather than established technologies (such as anaerobic digestion) and large scale operations, measures in the strategy could benefit novel biomethane technologies, including gasification, as well as innovative operational arrangements such as regional clusters.
The strategy also encourages the use of digestate as a bio-based fertiliser, biogenic carbon capture via innovative technologies and manure processing – all products/services associated with biomethane production.
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